Rather change the plight of people

Date: 17 December 2014   Read: 438

R200 000 could make a significant contribution to rehabilitate the Makhado municipal swimming pool which was allowed to fall into total ruin as a result of a lack of responsible upkeep.

The repaired pool could bring health, safety and joy to thousands of local youths during the coming hot summer days. In the process, we may very well nurture several undiscovered future world champions (Chads Le Clos’?) from Limpopo. But the mayor of Makhado prefers to spend our taxpayers’ money on changing street names.

A sizeable stretch of land, which was donated to the local municipa­lity several years ago, complete with a serviced borehole plus installed pumping station and irrigation tanks on high stands, ready for the deve­lopment of an agricultural project for the local youth, was allowed to be left totally unattended, plundered and destroyed, before it could even start as a project to empower our youth, or to assist and feed the poor. Such a project could be named after a mayor who cares more about changing the desperate plight of all jobless and needy people instead of changing names.

During this December’s International Day for the Disabled, our local Tshilwavhusiku Centre caring for our handicapped children and Rivoni’s important work for our blind and Hlanganani’s precious work for our aged would no doubt be well pleased with an extra R200 000 to bring Christmas cheer to old and young in their charge - assisting the plight of a significant number of our local brothers and sisters, and our elderly who are struggling with eyesight and hearing problems, to receive a new lease on life. But the mayor of Makhado prefers to change street names instead.

A remarkable resident of the town, who regularly prepares more than 100 meals to feed jobless people in town and provides them with fresh fruits, performs this charitable act without any payment and while she is enduring serious pain and discomfort, because she herself is in need of serious expensive operations which can heal her, but which she cannot afford. Yet our local residents’ money will rather be spent on the changing of street names.

Many villages around town, together with Tshikota, need streets that must still be constructed before they can even be called streets. But the mayor of Makhado insists on rather spending the residents’ money on the changing of names of streets which are urgently in need of  physical repair and improvement in any case. 

Some of these streets will have to be rebuilt completely before they can be named at all. But the mayor of Makhado promises to fight to change names instead of fighting to change our very real needs.

When our mayor in an aggressive racist name fight refers to “our people”, he can obviously not be referring to all the residents of this town. He can also not be referring to a specific ethnic group, because even members of his own ethnic group disagree with his stance. The “our” he refers to must be a fairly dull, lonely, malicious and weirdly strayed exclusive clique who has lost its grip on the reality of our entire history and the future of the rainbow ideals of our benevolent, progressive, harmonious non-racist community.   

Viva our rainbow society, Viva!

– Francis van der Merwe.
Louis Trichardt